ISO: ISO Book Club Menu Ideas for "To Kill A Mockingbird"

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dawnnys

Well-known member
Any and all wanted - especially appetizers.

I have a few ideas (pecan pie, fried chicken) but I thought I'd get your ideas too.

Oven and refrigerator available, for about 20 people.

Thanks!!

 
NFRC: May I offer a book suggestion, for the future, for your bookclub?

I am an avid reader - belonging to two bookclubs. In the spirit of "To Kill A Mockingbird", in the sense of a book written from a child's eye, is "The Education of Little Tree". It is such a wonderful, bittersweet, short read. It is the story of a young native American being raised by his grandparents. It is now my 'book gift of choice'smileys/smile.gif

Debra

 
Since I am a good old Southern girl from Mississippi not too far away from the fictional setting....

These are some of the really old standbys that I always remember being on the table especially in the summer at my grandmother’s farm:
• Biscuits to go with the fried chicken
• Tomato gravy - add flour to the pan you cooked your chicken in (keeping just enough oil but all the 'cracklings') then cook to a golden brown but not too dark, add a large can of whole tomatoes crushing in your hand as you add them, and then water or chicken broth to get to the right consistency. Season with salt & pepper.Serve over split biscuits.
• Fried pies! – typically start with a dried fruit such as apples or apricots cooked down with water and sweetened to taste (the apple always looked like what I later found most people to call apple butter) most of the time but sometimes with peaches that were canned, she always used canned biscuits and rolled them out into a circle, filled them and then used a fork to crimp the edges. She heated a little bit of lard in a cast iron skillet in the oven and then placed them two at a time in the pan and put in the oven turning once. Most of the places left that do them use pie crust now to make them and they deep fry them. You can serve warm or cold – the leftover cold ones disappeared just as fast as the hot ones fresh out of the oven – we used to always fight over them.
• Chicken & dumplins - the thin rolled type dumplin, not the drop or biscuit type
• Greens - turnip, mustard
• Pole beans - cooked long and slow with salt pork (you can cheat and start with Allen's brand of canned beans)
• Purple hulled black eye peas (fresh or frozen)
• Butter beans – not limas
• Squash cassserole
• Fresh sliced tomatoes, cucumbers & onions
• Tomato sandwiches (these could be made into an appetizer) - just cheap white bread with mayo, good ripe tomato slices, salt and pepper
• Cornbread - no sugar, very little flour, usually baked in a cast iron skillet and served in wedges with plenty of pot liquer from the greens or beans
• Cucumber, onion and tomato salad - just slice cucumbers and onions, cut tomato into wedges and cut the wedges into bite size chunks, add white vinegar and a little sugar to taste along with some black pepper - let sit in fridge a little while before serving
• Potato salad
• Fried bologna sandwiches - fry the bologna (thick slices, cut the edges to keep from curling, place on white bread with mustard)
• Sweet potatoes - candied or in a casserole with marshmallows on top
• Deviled eggs
• Corn – on the cob or creamed – we never did what they call skillet corn or whole kernel corn

 
Music City Missy Is On The Ball!!...(more)

...as I was drafting my reply to your ISO, Dawn, Music City Missy's msg popped up. She has it all figured out!! The only thing I would add to her list is pimento cheese finger sanwiches, cheese straws, and banana pudding.

I live near Monroeville, AL, and have seen the play performed by local townspeople in the Old Courthouse in Monroeville. It is an awesome production each May.

I was lucky to marry into a large family of good Southern cooks (I am from L.I.), and the first dishes to disappear at our family reunions are Deviled Eggs, Chicken and Dumplings (the rolled kind), Cornbread, Butterbeans, Collard or Turnip Greens, Chicken and Dressing (cornbread recipe), and banana pudding or peach cobbler for desert.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (ajc.com/living) has an AJC Classic Recipes button that will give you a list of "Saving Southern Food" recipes that look good. If you need any additional recipes, contact me.

Enjoy a Great Read and a Great Menu, and let us know how the event turns out!

 
I've tried and tried to think of that, maybe...

of course the deviled eggs could easily be served as an appetizer.

You could make tiny tomato sandwiches as an appetizer.

It really wasn't until the late 70s that we really had 'appetizers' much and it was the stuff we all think of as the classic retro stuff - pigs in blankets, spinach dip, shrimp dip, etc.

What about serving 'Southern style' chicken wings - fry them like you would southern fried chicken rather than serving full pieces of fried chicken. Serve with small bit sized biscuits.

You could serve small bite sized biscuits with all sorts of jams and jellies - strawberry, blackberry, peach preserves, fig preserves were BIG, pear preserves, plum jelly or order some muscadine, pawpaw or mayhaw jams & jellies - those are REAL Southern! (Bainbridge & Sussies are two good brands) We used to go into the woods to gather the muscadines and scuppernong and little pink plums not the plums we see in grocery stores - they had a completely different flavor.

We also would by those little 'cake' shortcakes in the grocery store and layer them with fresh strawberries that had been sliced and sweetened and either the whipped cream out of a can or Cool Whip.

We made sweet tea (REALLY SWEET) and then would muddle some mint leaves in it.

About the only soup we had was my grandmother's vegetable soup that she canned and then we would sometimes add some ground beef or shredded chicken.

We did stuffed bell peppers just with rice and ground beef and tomato sauce - you might could use a smaller pepper that is not a true bell pepper but similar to make these into an appetizer or get some bell peppers that have say 3 to 4 really well cupped sections and carefully cut it apart to make into 'boats'.

OH - we did put just fresh banana peppers on the table and later we started serving wedges of them with ranch dip.

It's not real old fashioned Southern cooking but you could make a black eye pea salsa and serve that.

Peanuts - we did boiled peanuts and that would work as an appetizer, we also parched them, fried them and topped off with seasonings.

Pecans - we seasoned them with worchestershire, butter, salt, garlic salt and such and then baked them.

It's not at all uncommon to see small 2 or 3 bite sized pecan or chess pies - not an appetizer but a good finger food. And of course tassies were always popular at the ladies luncheons.

I think one other thing we used to see that I don't see that might work would be Benedictine finger sandwiches. And sometimes just plain old cucumber sandwiches.

I'm rambling but I am just trying to think of what you could do.

OH - pickled okra and homemade sweet pickle chips - thick and crunchy - candy like not your normal pickles (I make a shortcut version by taking whole dill pickles and slicing them thick. Layer in a jar with sugar and pickling spice and let them sit a week or two - they candy and make their own syrup.)

Caramel cake, coconut cake, etc. for desserts

 
Yep - forgot a few...

definitely cheese straws (easy to make in advance), pimento and cheese (freshly made with some grated onion), banana pudding, cobblers of all kinds.

Of course I forgot to BIG mainstays - fried catfish (or you could use bream if you can get it)- you could do some nuggets here and that could serve as an appetizer. Hushpuppies. Fried okra. Coleslaw (not that big of a fan of it but we sure had it all the time).

OH - Appetizers - you could put small pieces of a country ham on biscuits. We also did cheese biscuits - regular biscuits baked then split and Velveeta (sorry no real cheese here - has to be a processed American cheese product here) put in the middle and placed back in the oven for the cheese to melt. If you can get a venison tenderloin, we used to cut it up and soak in milk then dredge in flour and pan fry and that goes in biscuits well too.

WATERMELON! - or melon balls - we did lots of melon balls!

 
How about black eye pea fritters? I have a recipe for black bean fritters.>>>

Why not black eyed peas? I have recipes for shrimp and corn fritters and crab fritters. Want any of those?

 
A Few More Ideas For Your Menu...and Thoughts on Southern Memories...

...this trip down Southern Memory Lane is a lot of fun (LOF). Music City Missy has been working hard. Here's a few random thoughts to add...

The Sweet Tea is ICED sweet tea, DEFINITELY a must.

Chicken salad tea sandwiches

Congealed salads with marshmallows and pecans

English pea salad

FYI: pecan tassies are tiny pecan pies, as far as I know.

Dawn, I betcha you have no idea what scuppernongs and muscadines are...they are the native grapes that grow in the South. I don't mean to put in a commercial plug, but my husband's winery gift shop offers Muscadine jelly and preserves. Scuppernongs are bronze muscadine grapes. (Trivia fact: the Union soldier who tried to molest Scarlett O'Hara was hunted down and buried under a Scuppernong vine arbor)

Missy's catfish suggestion is a good one, because the fictional town of Maycomb, the setting for the story, is really Monroeville, AL, and it is close to rivers that were fished commercially for catfish during the time-period of the story. My father-in-law was one of those fishermen.

'Bye for now,

 
Fried green tomatoes.Ham biscuits--no cheese!.Cheese straws.

Missy, have to say that in our part of the South we don't use cheese in ham biscuits. A good spread for them is butter creamed with a little brown sugar and a bit of mustard. Spread on hot biscuit, and use either country ham or a baked ham chip. There are some really good frozen "tea" biscuits now--Mary B. Brand. 30 to bag.
DH's aunt lives on Harper Lee's street.

 
The cheese was just for a 'cheese' biscuit - definitely not ham & cheese...

I guess you could say it was a precursor to the garlic and cheese drop biscuits they do at all the restaurants now. As kids we all fought over the cheese biscuits - they were somewhat of a treat when my grandmother would have the cheese.

Ham biscuits were just ham - I can rarely remember anything being served with them but these days I do see them with some spicy mustards such as Honeycutt's mustard with the horseradish and brown sugar in it and you can cut that with a little mayo to make more of a sauce.

As for the fried green tomatoes - you can now find some pretty good commercial ones at restaurant supply houses.

 
Marianne & Durward are remembering some I forgot...

Somethings you just take for granted such as sweet tea being Iced sweet tea. There are some more modern 'Southern' foods but I was going back to the traditional old standby foods of my childhood that would have been more similar to some of the foods that would have been eaten during the period the book was about.

One other thing we are all forgetting is bbq - that has always been a big part of our life. Smoked meats were very common. You might do Gretchen's pulled pork with a sweet tomato based sauce on some small buns for an appetizer. Or some ribs that are cut into 'riblets' would be a nice appetizer too - we've done those for parties and just had the butcher cut each slab into 1/2s or 1/3s depending on what type & size of ribs we were using. And it was quite common to have plain old pork & beans or baked beans on the table no matter whether there was bbq or not.

Pot roasts that cook until they fall apart and things like chicken fried meats smothered in gravy were also very common on the table, even more so than chicken.

I think you need to get some muscadine wine from Marianne's husband's winery if he has it - it's wonderful! If he doesn't have it, I can suggest a couple of other brands and there is a brand of bottled juice that is nice if you don't want wine but I can't remember the name.

Congealed salads and frozen salads were big and often done in little paper cupcake liners. English pea salad, three bean salad, and corn salads were popular as were casseroles with cream of this and cream of that soup. We often made tuna or chicken salad for a quick lunch during the summer when we were working in the truck patch. And chicken pie - sort of a pot pie but not with all the veggies that most people think of - these were plain - just chicken, broth, sliced hard boiled eggs, thin rolled dumplins and a sort of pie crust top was always my favorite of my grandmother's dishes.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Hope you have fun with your party. PS - a few books you might check out for fun and even some recipes - Being Dead is No Excuse:The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting a Funeral, The GRITS (Girls Raised in the South) books, and The Sweet Potato Queens' Big Ass Cookbook (And Financial Planner).

 
Oh, good news.Couldn't imagine. Did you know you can freeze green tomatoes?

It's easier to find the tomatoes than the restaurant supply house! ;o)

 
Scuppernong Juice and Wine...

...we have both wine and non-alcoholic juice made from bronze Muscadine grapes, commonly called Scuppernongs, as well as the jams and jellies made from the black varieties (Muscadines). If you want a non-alcoholic beverage, our Scuppernong juice is wonderful! Tastes exactly like the grapes it is made from, and has no sugar added. It retails for $6.00/bottle (750 ml) and we can ship some to Dawn if she is interested. She may find some Scuppernong wines in her area, but the juice is a rare find.

If anyone wants to visit us, we are mid-way between Mobile, AL and Pensacola, FL.

Missy, my husband was reminiscing about his childhood memories of foods served in the 1930's, and he remembered the same things you and Durward have described. Thanks to both of you for taking the time to write it all down.

Cheers!

 
Since most people have never heard of scuppernong...

I usually just refer to muscadines and most people don't really know the difference. The great thing they are discovering is that they have wonderful health benefits - much like the French paradox and you can get it from the juice and skins - doesn't have to be made into wine.

When our friends from Britian came over, we served muscadines and scuppernong (they actually get them at Harris Teeter and Publix and I can also get them at the farmers markets). Most of the people at the party had never had them and didn't know how to eat them so it got sort of comical watching them with their thick skins. That was always part of the fun to pop them in your mouth and pop the skins - it's a art to eat them:) I can remember going out to pick them - always taking a truck so we could use the bed and top of the cab to climb up and grab hold of the vines and a gun because there were occassions that we would shoot down a limb to get to them besides all the snakes we would run upon. But we would eat them until our mouths hurt and our stomachs - it's a wonder we got home with enough to make jelly.

 
No, I guess I had never thought about it until ...

one of the guys in culinary school was saying they got their green tomatoes already battered and frozen. They are very good and come from the local Sysco place which is extremely convenient and open to the public although not everything is in the cash & carry store but you can get anything if you just ask.

I haven't costed it out but buying green tomatoes from most of the vendors and supermarkets around here costs an arm and a leg until you get to the point in the year where they are overrun with tomatoes and even then because it seems to be such a big deal to have fried green tomatoes, they sell them for more than the ripe ones. So maybe I'll buy some and try it this year - how do you freeze them? Whole?. Sliced? Sliced and battered/breaded?

I haven't perfected it but this little restaurant we go to serves fried green tomatoes with two sauces - a remoulade type sauce and a cilantro pesto dressing - has mayo, sour cream or something of the sort it it. We can do without the remoulade but the cilantro pesto dressing they do is to die for! And they top it off with pickled julienned veggies - yellow squash, zucchini and red & yellow peppers that are heavenly - did find out he uses rice wine vinegar to pickle them and it think that is all but I haven't tried it myself yet. I wouldn't have put all that together but it works very nicely. If you have any cilantro pesto or cilantro pesto dressing recipes - send them my way as I am still experimenting on that part.

 
Y'all are assuming that us Yankees and West-coasters know about fried green tomatoes, LOL >>

I'm clueless! I know there was a movie by that name with Jessica Tandy but that's all I know. Could you tell me how to do it? I just planted lots of tomatoes and I'd love to try it.

 
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